Vladimir Beekman was an Estonian writer and translator, born 23. 8. 1929 in Tallinn, where he died on 3. 10. 2009.

He was evacuated to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1941 and survived the blockade of the city.

Studied at the Technical College of Tallinn, where he graduated in 1953 as professional chemical and mining engineer. Since 1956 he worked professionally as a writer. First book publication in 1952. With a total of 38 published books in Estonian, including poetry collections, novels, travelogues, children's books, memoirs, film manuscripts, he has been translated into 11 foreign languages. Various literary and essayistical articles in the press. Beekman worked as a translator from Germanic and Slavic languages since 1953. All in all he published 150 literary works and 12 plays from Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Russian and Czech, including authors like Selma Lagerlöf, Astrid Lindgren, Otfried Preussler or Alexander Tvardovsky.

He has been nominated among the best translators in the field of children's literature by the jury of the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1993. During the years 1983-1995 he was chairman of the Writers' Union of Estonia.